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Post by Admin on May 18, 2014 23:13:49 GMT
Ukip launched a provocative poster campaign ahead of the vote. Credit: John Stillwell/PA Wire A leading bookmakers has made Ukip favourites to win more votes than any other party at this week's European elections. William Hill has cut the party's odds from 8/15 down to 2/5 - appearing to indicate that a series of recent controversies has done little to tarnish the party's appeal with voters. Graham Sharpe, a spokesman for the company, said 40% of all bets struck and 70% of stake money have been for UKIP in the run-up to Thursday's vote. Two polls have been published giving completely different forecasts for how Ukip will perform in Thursday's European elections. A ComRes survey for The Independent on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror puts Nigel Farage's party out in front with 35% - one point up on last week - among those "absolutely certain" to vote on Thursday in the election to the Strasbourg Parliament. In contrast, an ICM poll for The Sunday Telegraph, said Ukip had slipped to third place behind the Conservatives ahead of the May 22 elections. That survey has Labour in first place on 29%, down one point on last month, while saying the Tories were up four points to 26% and Ukip had dropped two points to 25%. It placed Liberal Democrat support at 7%. Meanwhile, the ComRes poll has Labour unchanged in second place on 24% while support for the Conservatives in third is down two points to 20%. It also placed the Greens in fourth place, up two points on 7%, leapfrogging the Lib Dems who slumped to just 6% with a two point drop. The ComRes poll also surveyed voting intentions for the general election. These results are still good news for Labour strategists - it comes after an ICM poll for The Guardian put the Tories in the lead for the first time in two years. According to ComRes, Ukip are polling third for next year's general election with 19% - down one point on the month - while the Lib Dems trail in fourth with 8%, a gain of one point. Meanwhile, ICM's separate Wisdom Index poll - charting voting intentions in the general election - has the Conservatives on 31.4%, marginally ahead of Labour on 30.7%. ComRes interviewed 2,045 GB adults online on May 14 and 15 for its poll, while ICM Research interviewed an online sample of 2,033 adults aged 18 and over on May 14 and 15.
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Post by Admin on May 19, 2014 21:08:39 GMT
This Thursday, citizens from across the EU will turn out to elect hundreds of representatives to the European Parliament. Well, some of us will. At the last elections, in 2009, only 43 per cent of eligible voters cast their ballots. In Britain, it was just 34.5 per cent. With a hefty dose of controversy thanks to a surge by the UK Independence Party, the event has dominated the headlines in recent weeks. But asked whether the result of the poll will have any impact on our lives – and whether we would notice any difference if Labour receives the largest number of MEPs, or Ukip does – MEP Godfrey Bloom told Metro: ‘British MEPs have 7 to 8 per cent of the vote in what is an amending chamber. So the answer to your question: it doesn’t make the slightest bit of bloody difference at all. ‘I think an awful lot of people don’t turn out to vote, they don’t understand it and they can’t be bothered.’ Mr Bloom has served as MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber since 2004. He was elected on a Ukip ticket but had the whip withdrawn last September after he hit a journalist over the head with a party brochure and referred to his female audience at a party event as sluts. He said that, on the one hand, we should care because ‘over 70 per cent of our law now comes from the European Union. And there are 2,000-odd rules and regulations that come in every year.’ On the other, he added: ‘The European Parliament isn’t a law-making body, it’s an amending chamber. So that does tend to suggest that it isn’t as important as it should be when it comes to the amount of legislation passing through.’ He also posed the question: ‘Do people not take much notice of the European elections because they don’t really understand them? I have dinner with men of my own age who read law at Oxford who still have absolutely no idea how they’re governed. In fact, you probably won’t be able to name more than three or four MEPs off the top of your head. I’ve never met anybody who can.’ Stephen Booth, research director of the Open Europe think tank, said: ‘The distance between your vote and what comes out of the EU machine is huge. That’s something that puts a lot of people off and makes it quite difficult to explain what the European Parliament does, even though it has huge amounts of power. It does make a difference, in that it does have quite a lot of legislative power – on issues such as free trade. But these are quite specific and technocratic, not the kind of things that are likely to capture a voter’s imagination.’ Open Europe is predicting a wave of gains for populist, anti-EU, anti-austerity, anti-immigrant and anti-establishment parties and estimates that protest parties of various forms could win as much as 31 per cent of the vote this time around, up from 25 per cent in 2009. Many activists hope to use the vote to get their campaigns on to the national agenda.
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Post by Admin on May 20, 2014 21:12:42 GMT
Earlier today, it emerged that Ukip would be holding a ‘mini-carnival’ in Croydon in an attempt to counter recent accusations that the party is racist. The main attraction would be Nigel Farage. The thought of the Ukip leader embracing Afro-Caribbean traditions in hope of appealing to ethnic minority voters was just too good for most journalists to miss, so they were out in force when the event kicked-off earlier this afternoon. The main story of the day centred around the steel drum group who had been booked to play the event. Apparently, they had no idea that this particular carnival was organised by Ukip. But then ‘carnival’ and ‘Ukip’ are two words that rarely share a sentence, so you can’t really blame them for not checking. The steel band then refused to play, saying they were misled by former boxer and current Ukip spokesman Winston Mckenzie. In the end, Farage didn’t even show. When asked if they knew the carnival would be hosted by Ukip, a member of the steel band – who did not wish to named – said ‘no we didn’t.’ Nigel Farage's Ukip party are likely to be at the forefront of a wave of eurosceptic parties gaining seats in Brussels, with anti-European parties in France, Greece, Hungary, Denmark and the Netherlands also predicted to make gains. European elections analyst Professor Sara Hobolt believes such parties could grow from having less than 20 per cent of European Parliament seats to at least 30 per cent. The largest party in the European Parliament is Germany's Christian Democratic Union, which has 34 MEPs and sits in the ruling European People's Party group in Brussels. Euroscepticism in the parliament is led by the Europe of Freedom and Democracy - chaired by Ukip leader Mr Farage - and to a lesser extent the European Conservatives and Reformists, which includes the UK's Conservative MEPs. The rise of anti-European parties across the continent has been fuelled by both an increase of migration across the EU and the eurozone financial crisis.
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Post by Admin on May 21, 2014 22:03:25 GMT
Large swaths of the press, including tabloid The Sun newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., have joined the fray. This week, The Sun asked readers whether they thought UKIP leader Nigel Farage was a "bigoted menace". But two polls published on Wednesday, on the eve of the European vote, the last major political test before a national election next year, suggested the sustained criticism was not deterring UKIP supporters. One poll, by YouGov for The Sun, had UKIP tied with the opposition Labour party on 27 percent, placing Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party on 23 percent. When only those who were certain to vote were counted, YouGov said UKIP had a 5 percentage point lead. A second poll for The Daily Mirror by Survation also had UKIP tied with Labour, this time on 29 percent. But again, when it took into account likelihood to vote and awareness of the vote, it credited UKIP with a 5 percentage point lead. Polling has shown that UKIP has siphoned support from all three main parties by tapping into discontent about the ability of politicians to effect change, particularly on immigration, which many Britons perceive to be overly high. Immigration has joined the economy at the top of voter concerns for the first time in years after EU restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians working in Britain were lifted at the start of the year. UKIP has leveraged concerns about higher immigration from the two poor east European nations to argue that the only way Britain can control its borders is by leaving the European Union to cut loose from the bloc's freedom of movement rules. But Farage, a fast-talking former commodities trader, has courted controversy by saying that people living in London would be worried if a group of Romanian men moved in next door because of high crime rates among such newcomers. This week's European elections are seen in the UK as testing the political waters ahead of next year’s general election and showcasing arguments for and against the European Union. But how do the opinions of British voters compare with those across the continent? Big majorities also want significant reforms. More than two thirds felt the EU needed to change, rising to almost three quarters in France. To find out, we conducted focus groups and polling in Great Britain, France, Germany and Sweden. We found that the electorates in all countries are united by a desire to stay in Europe, coupled with a demand that the EU makes big changes. In each country, a majority would vote to remain in the EU if a referendum were held. While the margin is narrow in Britain and Germany, the French back membership by more than two-to-one. However, this as yet unfulfilled demand for change has not stirred people into action. Instead, voters in the focus groups are largely disengaged when it comes to this week’s elections – either undecided how to vote or planning to use the ballot to express opinions on domestic issues. David Cameron, who is proposing a referendum on Europe, says he wants Britain to stay in the EU but wants to reform the way it works. Voters across the continent agree with him.
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Post by Admin on May 22, 2014 21:47:22 GMT
Ukip will win the European elections and the Liberal Democrats will be left back in fifth place, pollsters have predicted. The prediction, based on a poll of 6,124 adults over the last two days by YouGov for The Sun, is that Nigel Farage's Ukip will gain most votes with 27%, despite him being involved in a number of racist and homophobic controversies in the lead up to election day. Labour is projected to come second with 26%, the Tories third with 22% of the vote, followed by the Greens on 10% and the Lib Dems with 9%. The poll suggests that Ukip and Labour will both have 22 MEPs, an increase of nine each on the last elections in 2009. The Conservatives are expected to get 16 of the 70 European Parliament seats being voted on in England, Scotland and Wales, 10 fewer than before, while the Greens will get four - an increase of two. The Lib Dems are expected to lose eight, leaving them with just three MEPs, while the far-right BNP will lose both its MEPs, the poll predicts. Farage shrugged off allegations that Ukip was a racist party as "rot" as he revealed he was "reasonably" confident about its election chances. Before casting his ballots at Cudham C of E Primary School in Westerham, Kent, the Ukip leader told reporters: "If we get what we like things will never be quite the same again." He added: "Waking up this morning I thought, 'What on earth do I do?'. I have been campaigning for months and I feel a bit vacant now." Asked about claims of racism in his party, he said: "I think the allegations of the political establishment are against us. The poll also found that less than a quarter of voters planned to go to the polling booths to actually influence the European Parliament, with 63% saying they would do so to express their views on the political scene in Britain and its relationship with the EU. Immigration and membership of the EU were the key issues for voters, but 42% still said they preferred to stay in Europe.
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